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Sousa crowned queen-maker at Ontario Liberal leadership convention

By Robert Benzie and Rob FergusonQueen's Park Bureau

Sun., Jan. 27, 2013

Charles Sousa was the queen-maker and soon will be crowned one of incoming premier Kathleen Wynne’s top ministers.

It was Sousa’s dramatic move to Wynne on Saturday — and his quiet lobbying of rivals Gerard Kennedy and Eric Hoskins in a Maple Leaf Gardens bathroom earlier at the Liberal leadership convention — that helped Wynne overtake Sandra Pupatello on the third ballot to succeed Dalton McGuinty and become Ontario’s first female premier.

“Kathleen and I complement one another,” Sousa, the affable Mississauga South MPP, said Sunday.

“It’s important for us to have a party and a government that … is balanced in its approach.”

Asked if he would like to serve as Wynne’s finance minister, the former Royal Bank of Canada executive smiled and said: “I will do as I’m told by our premier-designate because I’m faithful to the province.”

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Sousa said he could not go to Pupatello, his centrist ideological soulmate, because the former Windsor West MPP no longer has a seat, having stepped down before the October 2011 election.

“Sandra’s great, she’d be a great leader, but there was the drawback that she wasn’t in the house, there was a drawback that we’d have to go for a byelection and there was a drawback that we’d still be talking politics and I want to be talking about governing.”

Hoskins — who is also in line for a top cabinet job, perhaps as education minister — began the convention-floor juggernaut toward Wynne when he went to her after finishing sixth on the first ballot.

Pupatello believed the St. Paul’s MPP would be joining her campaign, after a secret kaffeeklatsch last Tuesday night at Hoskins’ Annex home with him and his wife, Samantha Nutt.

She arrived with a Dufflet chocolate and hazelnut sponge cake — iced in hazelnut butter cream with a dark chocolate ganache glaze — and huddled alone with Hoskins and Nutt for an hour.

Sources say Pupatello — whose campaign claims to have redirected at least $20,000 in promised donations to the Ontario Liberal Party in Hoskins’ team’s name last week to help pay for his delegates’ fees — believed Hoskins, mindful he was in last place, would march to her camp immediately after his speech, before the first-ballot results were released Saturday.

Hoskins’ officials deny that account.

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Pupatello’s hopes of that convention-floor momentum-builder were dashed when he opted to await the first-ballot tally. That crucial delay allowed Health Minister Deb Matthews, Wynne’s campaign co-chair, and former premier David Peterson, Matthews’ brother-in-law, time to arm-twist Hoskins.

Still, Hoskins initially appeared to be walking across the Gardens floor in Pupatello’s direction amid a throng of supporters and journalists when he stopped at centre ice and turned to point at Wynne, electrifying her backers.

“No, I made no deal and no agreement with either,” he said Sunday, insisting his meandering trek to Wynne’s encampment was because of the arena’s configuration.

Hoskins had hoped Sousa, in fifth after the first ballot, would join forces with him to take their support to Wynne and end the convention early.

But Sousa, who had made no deals with anyone, wanted to try his luck on the second ballot. At the same time he was quietly chatting with Kennedy about together crowning Wynne on a third ballot.

The presence of his friend, Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion, in Wynne’s entourage helped him come to his decision.

While Sousa had planned to walk with Kennedy, their fists clenched together above them in a victory march, that plan stalled because the former Parkdale-High Park needed to talk with his backers.

“I was hoping he would come with me so we could do it together, but he opted to have a discussion still,” said Sousa.

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